In this episode, Erika Varangouli guides the class on populating a content strategy.
She talks about;
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Name:Erika Varangouli
What Erika Does: Head of SEO Branding at Semrush
Company: Semrush
Noteworthy: Erika is also a public speaker, regular webinar host, and awards judge.
Connect with Erika;
Manual SERP Analysis for Keyword Mapping
Erika guides participants on manually conducting a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) analysis to map keywords to content pages.
She breaks down the process into three key steps: identifying content format, noting main topics covered, and identifying SERP features.
Erika uses the example of “self-drive car rental” to demonstrate the manual analysis, emphasizing the importance of understanding the user intent behind a query.
She encourages participants to observe the SERP features, such as featured snippets, people also ask, and other elements.
Automated SERP Analysis with SEMrush
Erika introduces participants to the semi-automated SERP analysis using tools like SEMrush. She demonstrates how to use SEMrush’s Keyword Overview to gain insights into user intent, keyword variations, and related keywords.
Erika further explains how participants can leverage SEMrush to view SERP features, and top-ranking pages, and even analyze individual pages’ keyword performance.
She provides insights into interpreting data, such as recognizing that a page ranking for multiple keywords doesn’t necessarily mean all keywords are present on the page.
Tailoring Content for Different Funnel Stages
Erika introduces the concept of funnel-stage content planning within the content strategy.
She encourages content marketers to categorize their content based on the awareness, consideration, or conversion stage.
Content Strategy – Breakdown Template
Erika Varangouli 0:05
Peris, Sandra, Chitra, Onize, festus, Emmanuela, who else is here. Sorry, that’s the end of my screen. In the meantime, how is it going with the assignments? Everyone?
Festus Eze 0:17
Hello
Erika Varangouli 0:19
Hello?
Festus Eze 0:21
I think it’s going fine, but what I don’t really I’ve not done before I don’t really understand is, how to map the keywords into pages now, some keywords were existing already, some may not be there already,
Erika Varangouli 0:37
okay
Festus Eze 0:37
So with this you’re going to create new pages. So how to now begin to map the keywords in the clusters. But I have not done the clusters yet anyway, but how to now map the keywords from the clusters into pages.
Erika Varangouli 0:52
So I think maybe this is what we’ll cover today, they may answer some of your answers some of your questions, sorry. And if it doesn’t, we can discuss because I think this is exactly what I was going to cover today in the lesson today how to get what you have, and map it into content. Festus you’re one step ahead of everyone all the time. It’s annoying. Stop doing that. Okay?
Festus Eze 1:19
Okay sorry
Erika Varangouli 1:24
Joking, don’t stop doing that. I love it. Okay, all right, let’s start. Because this is what I want to do, I want to make sure we cover the next step today. It’s not going to be a lot of slides, because I hate them as well. I’m going to show you the evolution of the sheet you got last week and what it transforms into. And then I want to discuss next steps where you might be stumbling and what is missing for you to get this done. All right.
So I’m going to start and I’m hoping that maybe anyone missing will join us or hopefully, okay, so let me share my screen. Okay, everyone see this? Okay, so this week, we’re going to talk about how you populate your content strategy. Okay. I want to say at this point, a content strategy as a document, maybe, like what you give to the client, right?
It may have to be also like a Google Doc or a presentation deck to highlight the main things you’ve found, right? You have done. Remember audience research, Business Research, competitor, analysis, content, audit, all of that. In this course, we are translating into assignments and different documents.
Chitra has chosen, for example, to keep everything in one presentation deck, which I think this is way better in terms of client facing documents, right? All the assumptions are they’re all the findings, everything.
So when we’re talking about your content strategy, you have two versions of that. One is what you want to talk or present to your client, maybe with some clients like it’s much more informal, like you don’t need to present you’re just talking on the phone or you know, via email.
I still feel that you know, the content strategy, when you get to the stage to share with them needs to be also a document summarising the main findings. Hi, Roshni, good to have you with us today. Very pleased to see you.
So we just started and it’s recorded. So I’m just, we’re gonna start with a new topic today. And at the end, I hope we have way more time. So I was just saying, what I’m going to show you today is the detailed work. And this is our assignments as well, right?
The work you’re doing the background, to get to know what you suggest, how you present that to your client, is, it’s up to you how you want to be portraying yourself as a professional also down to the relation you have with a client how much they pay you because like creating presentations is not something that happens in like five minutes.
So here, I haven’t included like, Okay, here’s the content strategy that you should be presenting, it should be a deck like this. But at the end of the process of working with a client to build a content strategy, I always think you should have a document or presentation to summarise the main findings.
Okay, just to make this clear. This is what Festus asked, right is like, how do I know based on the keywords I have? What I need to what pages to map what to map it right so remember, last week we discussed coming up with a list of priority keywords.
For the sake of the assignment we limited it as well for the audit and for this one just so you all I understand are busy and have other things. So it doesn’t have to be the the final list you would give to this client.
However, for a client that you actually work with those lists should be bigger than what we have. So eventually, you will end up with a list that let me share this tab for a bit.
So we were here, okay, you have your keyword, your mSv, keyword difficulty, intend the ranking URL, current position, the cluster that you have found, or believe it will go to that can also change as you go, right?
So some things here, like the cluster, or the priority maybe can change as you go. And then how you found it through which process because it is easy then to use in your summary of how you come up with this strategy.
Right. So you already have this from last week. And today, we’re going to work on this bit, which I think is exactly the breakdown and the backbone of your whole strategy. The final kind of suggestions you’re going to make. So let’s see how we do this. And essentially, there are two things you can do. And you should do at this point. One, let’s assume you have no access to any tools, right? You don’t have SEMrush se ranking, moz, you don’t have anything.
What do you do you take your keywords, and you do manually a SERP analysis SERP analysis means that you go on Google search for your term. And then you take note of what content ranks, right? And what what is the content type? Are they long form guides?
Is it like news articles? Is it whatever? Let’s think listicles? Like top 10? Is it infographics? Is it short articles and short answers? So you need to be taking notes of like let’s say the top 10? What kind of content format they’re using right? Stay top-level to begin with?
What is the content format? Number two, I mean, the number two thing you do in the manual analysis is write down the main topics they cover, right? You’re going to need these later when creating the brief for the writer or if you’re writing the content yourself.
What are the main content they’re covering within the top-ranking ones? Number three is what are the SERP features that you see on the page? So do you see a Featured Snippet at the top? Do you see instant answer? Do you see people also ask, do you see video carousels or images also, right.
And nowadays on Google, you will see that at the top of the results, you very often get like those filters to go images perspective shopping, if it’s like more commercial terms, make note of all of these things like okay, because these show the intents, the main intents behind the term that you want to target.
The intent is not just something you see by looking at the top five or top 10. Typically, for many years in search, what people did to rank was like look at who ranks at the top and just do the same reworded a bit and maybe add a couple more things on that site and expect to rank.
This is not where searches going. And definitely with the latest updates. But yeah, at some point that had to end. So you need to take good note of what you see, what is Google showing is very important to understand how Google is seeing what people need to get for that query. And then for those features, you need to check what content ranks in there like maybe the content you see if you have images being prominent or videos, the content you see there may be very different from different sources, then the pages ranking on the SERPs, okay?
And all of those things tie into how you map this content. Now, this is the hard way, right? Like this is the completely manual way. I still do that to a degree like I do need to physically check some things from for myself.
However, there’s a second way which is an automated serpina automated, semi automated you get more things from the tools I mean, you still need to check things yourself. So let’s say you have access to SEMrush to a tool like SEMrush or or you could be using something else that offers you like similar capabilities like you insert your tool.
For this one, you go to keyword overview. I’ll show you everything on screen I have less practice. So as soon as we go over the overview, we’ll we’ll check it on screen as well. So you go to keyword overview if Put your keyword in, and then you automatically can see what’s your primary intent for that keyword that can pretty much tell you okay, the primary intent is commercial.
So maybe I know already, I have a hint. And I may be meeting a more commercial page here versus like a blog post, right. But I just write it down. Oftentimes, you will see multiple intents for a keyword, which means that the intents are mixed.
It’s not just one intent. You can also find straightaway, ideas for secondary keywords or questions to cover with your content and include in your brief to the writer.
And then you can click on each one of the top performing URLs, and get way more insights around the content type, ranking keywords or keywords for which they’re featured in SERP features. Okay, so let’s do the exercise together. One second, let me bring it up on my screen.
Let me share this one instead. Okay, so I am. Oh, you can see my screen. So I am on keyword overview. Okay. And what I do here, on the template I had shared I think I had like SEO tools.
Does anyone want to use a different keyword just to mix it up? And just so we don’t always talk about SEO tools and seminars? Like do you have a keyword from your client that you want to try together?
Chitra Iyer 11:39
Use car rental
Erika Varangouli 11:43
I think that would be that sounds like such a big head term that I don’t know, like, probably have to do with like a homepage or a big category page. Can we go into something? Maybe a bit more specific?
Chitra Iyer 11:58
Yeah. About self drive car rental,
Erika Varangouli 12:04
self drive. Let’s see what happens. self driving? Does it have more? No. Okay. Okay. So this is what you see, once you get to, to put your keyword on your database.
By the way I see here that this is a much bigger term, like in India versus like, the US doesn’t seem to have caught up on that. So I’m just highlighting that, you know, it depends on the market who are working on as well, right? Like this has a huge search volume, but it comes from India.
So I don’t know, like how good these results are. Or if you’re working in Indian market, which is good. Like we’re gonna keep it as an example. I’m just saying that here, you can also get an indication because I’m no cheap, right?
You have a client, it is kind of global, right in different markets. And we don’t actually work with them to know which markets they prioritise.
But I see, for example, the search volume for for this term is quite low in the US. So let’s continue just to use this as an example. Sorry, that was a diversion. So once you come here, right, what you see straightaway, so the intent, the intent is commercial. So automatically, I get a hint that okay, this is this is a term I’m going to need to address probably with like more commercial conversion, leading content.
I glanced on the trend, like sometimes it’s just an indication, you know, if if a keyword has a dying trend, maybe reconsider whether you want to prioritise it or not, right, it looks to be doing fine. So we’re continuing difficulty. Okay, you’ve seen all of that in the previous step as well. So next thing you can do here is keyword variations questions.
And you also have your clusters from the previous step. But here, you can, for example, click on this and it takes you directly to the report where you have your relevant keywords about this term, right export them as they are and feel free to use in your brief or in your final kind of plan. I’ll show you on the template if you want to use some of them.
Alright, so that’s what I mended by using something like SEMrush for example, you can filter down to some variations they link through to keyword magic tool, but from here they show you for this exactly where it’s like some initial you can even just copy and paste from here if you think and you see them and you think okay, these top five are our super relevance or or maybe not I’m like, Yeah, I wouldn’t include them if my market is us, for example, but or this, but these two are pretty similar. They’re pretty close probably need to cluster together. So it fits into that. And then you have this analysis here. All right.
Chitra Iyer 15:22
And onize also has a question too. I’ll just make it quick. Would it be considered a long term keyword long tail keyword, if I go with like, say self drive cars plus the name of the city and the name of the airport?
Erika Varangouli 15:38
It would, yeah, I think like so longtail keywords. We had differences in opinions for a while. I think in the industry, maybe we still do. For many people, it was like, okay, longtail is if it’s like three, five terms or more, right?
For me longtail keywords always had to do with, with kind of like, going deeper into a topic defining something further a query that is more detailed than just a head term, right.
So self drive car rental, plus, let’s say Bangalore, right? This is a much more specific query that yes, for me would qualify as longtail. It requires specific content to address it. Okay.
I don’t know like cheaper. Why? Why do you ask this year because you I imagined like in your plan, you would have some like head terms, shorter terms and the longtail terms anyway. So this is an exercise for like, the keywords. But yeah, mmm
Chitra Iyer 16:48
hmm. The reason I asked is because in my research, I found like, optimising or creating content, which is specific to if you pick the top 10 markets where maximum cars are getting rented out, identifying for where the maximum pickup, happens of the rental cars, and then you that’s like a kind of a low hanging fruit to make sure that you have content that addresses that particular.
Erika Varangouli 17:17
Okay, okay. Okay, got it. Okay. So like in your case, I think that would have to do a lot with also like the business feedback on like, this is where, if it’s airports, right, sometimes like some airports work better for some car rental companies than other because they have like an office versus not having an office. Right. But from your side.
Yeah, you can absolutely flag that. Again, these are the keywords that get the most searches behind, right, maybe we should consider targeting them if it’s also relevant to their business. And they do have like, a presence there. Yeah, that makes absolute sense. Okay, so then you scroll down, and you see on SEMrush. Here, you can see like pretty much all the top pages on Google, like the first 100 results in the order in which they rank.
Okay, so you can see, okay, this is the page that ranks at the top number two, then I have a people also ask so you can see the SERP features right straightaway. And then if you click on it, you can see which pages are within those, that initial drop down and people also ask, then I have my third. So you get a good idea. And you can also click Wait, here you can see the summary of the SERP features.
So you can see it has reviews, it has images, it has people also ask why your what you can also do is click on View SERP and you get a snapshot of what the SERP look like. Okay, so you see, like it says, If you drive here, it shows us four United States desktop, November 2023 snapshot. And then you get this, it shows reviews. Like many times by looking at it, you see things that may not directly impact your strategy, there are still good insights for your client.
Like if I was doing a strategy for this client, for example, maybe wouldn’t be up to me at all to do anything about the ratings, right. But what I could flag if I saw this also been a pattern is, you know, for many of the terms you’re targeting Google surfaces reviews, and we all know reviews are becoming more and more important, they’re taking like they’re making it even real time after this update.
So what I would say to them is, I’ve noticed you can check very quickly what kind of reviews they have, how do they feature reviews in the content that could fit into your content audit, right? Say okay, you have these product pages, but they do not have reviews on them.
You should absolutely work to get reviews or check, where do they get like, which ones have the biggest reviews and say, Okay, you’re competing with them. But I feel part of it is not just because of the content is because they have plans of reviews that are great, right. So they’re obviously very trusted. And you should also plan to do this much more.
So that is something that is not necessarily directly influenced by you, you cannot write reviews yourself. But it is, it is really valuable for a client when they need to sort of create content and rank here. So you can have a visual of the SERP through this through this button here, and then you’re here. And let’s say I get the first one. If I click on it, like, if you click here, you can see you go to the actual page or right on your browser.
But then, if you click just on the link, you will go to the organic search report for that specific page on SEMrush. So what you can see here is okay, this page ranks for 38 keywords, that’s an estimation of the traffic I can see it’s probably a new page because it wasn’t doing anything until this year. So it’s probably a new page.
And then I can see the keywords it ranks for buying 10 Blah, blah, blah, and then I click to see all the keywords that it ranks for and it’s physicians for them. Right, so I can see that. It ranks number one for self driving car rental.
But also, this is what it has, it has like reviews, it has the image also ranking for this SERP features, they get links for these terms, and their search volume. Okay. So here, this kind of exercise can also give you ideas for what additional keywords you need to target.
With your content, I need to make a note right now, because if I forget, there’s going to be serious misinformation, the keywords, you will see most of the pages ranking for right, this is content pages or this kind of page, it doesn’t mean that the content they have on the page includes all of those keywords.
Right? This is a mistake to assume like you can see sometimes with pages that are informative rank at the top, they may rank for 1000s of keywords like one page alone, it doesn’t mean that that page has all these 1000s keywords included on the page.
What it means is that, you know, Google is great at recognising the relevance between terms random long term, so it can rank you for a term that has very similar intent that you’re covering really well. It may have to do also with the overall relevance and authority of the site.
So it’s not just a one page thing, like please don’t ever look at the page, the keywords it ranks for and then create a briefer writer and poor writer to include all these keywords in the content.
Okay, that’s not how it’s supposed to be used. It’s supposed to be used to understand, okay, the pages that do it well, these are the keywords they rank for.
So obviously, they’re relevant, I can check the page and see like, Okay, how have they structured it? How much content does it have? Okay, does it target some of them directly? Or not? Maybe some of them, yes, maybe some of them not.
I will do the same exercise for the ranking number two URL or number three, and then maybe between them, I can see some common ground. And I can come up with the keywords that are absolutely essential for me to cover on the page.
Maybe they are part of the sub headings, right. And you can give me more ideas about what other terms are relevant. So I’m back into this window. Alright.
So this is how you do it using sem rush. Let me know if you want me to demonstrate on Google, but I think that is quite self explanatory. Like you google your term.
And you sort of like go through this but manually like you see the filters appearing the SERP features you make notes of of who ranks and everything. So the only next thing I wanted to tell you about and I haven’t seen anyone saying that they’ve used it is this AI and large language models.
Remember from the first class we had, I said that using AI is absolutely fine as long as you disclose it. So then we can discuss like okay, how are you using it right.
I believe AI can help us massive As content marketers, provided we use it correctly. So I was thinking then, alright, you have done this exercise, you’ve written down your initial kind of like, okay, secondary keywords to target the ranking pages, you’ve taken ideas from them, you by now, after doing that for the, let’s say, the top ranking pages, you should have an idea.
Okay, what is the content format that I need to go for? Do I need to go for a long article? Or do I need to prioritise a short landing page?
So at that level, you have that you have seen the titles of the pages that rank that can also give you an idea of what to go for? You have seen the SERP features the questions that Google’s answers I can people also ask or in perspective, so you have good idea so far.
And then what you typically do is, for example, you get a content marketing tool, right? It can be frase IO, it can be SEMrush, its content marketing toolkit, you have as your writing assist, and there’s, you can have clearscope.
There’s tonnes of content marketing tools, right. I assume you have access to none like, I know what sem rush Content Marketing Toolkit is separate.
So I’m not sure if you have access, so I didn’t want to assume anyone has access. So what happens if in real time, you have no access to content marketing tools that are paid? Right now, nowadays, you can use AI.
So what you can do, right is you I did a simple exercise I was using, like SEO tools as my basis as a keyword. You can use a free tool, even if you don’t have paid chat GPT. I like claude is doing a really good job as well, I think many times, but there’s also tonnes of others. And you can start prompting it with the content you’ve found of the SERPs.
Right? You can start saying okay, here’s I took the top ranking article only, like it was one from buffer, I think. And I said, Okay, please show me create, I copied and pasted the text because for example, remember charging at the free version does not have access to the internet, right?
So copy and paste the text and you can say, Okay, give me a list of all the headings and subheadings in this text. Okay, give me a summary of the main topics covered under each subheading, or in this article, depending on how you wanted to structure it.
You can use the insights you have from your audience analysis to see okay, review this piece, as I don’t know, what’s the example of solo traveller looking to travel cheap, but safely or as if you’re a content marketer who is trying to find the best SEO tool in the market, but who is not very savvy so you can give it we can provide more details you have the pain points, as if you’re a certain SEO manager with no budget to get a tool which one should they buy?
So review it as this audience and what are the things this content does well, what are what is it missing or how can it be improved to help you who is reviewing it a is as that person or then you copy and paste more of the text from the other pages on say find the common topics covered between the different types of copied here.
And then you can very, very quickly get something that used to be manual or needs a paid tool and you can get a language model to do this analysis for you and say okay, between among these three pages or texts, I can see common ground between this this this and that topic.
This one also has this. Then format, you can ask you to format the findings like say, Okay, please include everything in a table formatted like this. Or you can do we can ask it to analyse the text in any kind of way that is useful for you, depending on what you’re missing from your analysis.
Most of the prompts I’ve used here, or like it’s not the don’t like the prompts are not something precious to us in these exact phrasing. Like they’re a fancy thing like that can be much better. But most of the problems here I attempted to replicate what paid tools do okay?
Of course, you get different results from them. Also, you have to remember like with Chat GpT free version you don’t you’re not on the internet you need to to literally copy and paste the text.
But the thing it is a great tool you now have on hand as content marketers to do Things that previously would not be able to do unless you paid for a tool, or unless you spend hours and hours doing it manually.
So please don’t forget to use AI large language models for your work because they can do they can help you that can be a really powerful tool on your hands. And I want you to remember this, also faster.
So I’m gonna, I’m gonna call you out. But I want you to remember, everything you’ve done so far leads to now it’s not just the keywords we found in the last lesson, or the content audit we did.
You have a list of potential topics from when you did your audience research phase, right, you have looked at forums, you have looked at social media, you have written down pain points.
You have your trends, your Google Trends, your topic research that you did back then you also have your competitor analysis and your gap analysis from your keywords, you have your content loaded, and you have your keyword research and topic clusters that you did a week ago.
So all of that goes into this strategy. Okay, all those this now is the time that it comes together, and informs what we’re doing here. So now we’re ready to go into transforming all those topics and keywords into actual content ideas.
And this is the template I’ve already added it, by the way, being very proactive today. I’ve already added it to the folder. But essentially, this part is copy and paste from what you’re working on now. Okay.
Once this is finished, from your last week, your gap analysis your you have your keywords here, you know if you have a URL or not ranking. And you already may have an idea of a cluster, but this is something I typically always back, go back to in the end, once I know everything I’m going to build and all my keywords, right.
So don’t worry if you need to make changes here, for example. So where do we go from here? Once you have this, you’re prioritising? Right? Yes. Okay, these are my pages, these are my keywords that I really need to target in order of priority, preferably right in order of priority.
If it’s something that you have already covered in your content audit, please don’t make the mistake of separating a content audit from a content strategy. Because a big part of maybe with some clients, a big part of what your strategy should suggest, is to actually improve and build on the content the client already has, right?
Many clients do the mistake of like having created a lot of content, thinking, Okay, we didn’t get it right, it doesn’t do much, let’s create a new strategy, get a new content writer in and they’ll create more new content, that will probably do exactly the same.
So the content audit should feed into this part here. Anything in the continuity that you found, targets a primary keyword or keyword you need to absolutely improve on should be also brought in here. But you don’t need to replicate the work.
So let’s say I had found this one SEO tools in my content audit and I had covered what needs to happen there. All I would do at this point is work from content audit, let’s say yes.
And link to content audit and just link to the to the document that I have described what needs to happen. Then I will move on to what else we’re doing here.
So for this keyword, right keyword, reverse image search keyword as a keyword on SEO tools, I would very briefly indicate what were the user I’m targeting with a content I’m suggesting is so with keyword for example, based on my research on what ranks, right, the analysis have just done. Maybe it’s intended, I don’t know, it’s informational. I would guess.
So. And this is what I have. But I’m not ranking at all. This is a good indication, if I didn’t say this last week, sometimes not ranking at all with a URL that SEMrush finds is a good indication that this is not the right page to target the intent, right?
It can be an indication of many things like lacking authority blacking a lot of content, but also it could be an indication of not nailing being too And correctly. So if, for example, in your document here, you see that, okay, I have this page that SEMrush finds is relevant for that term.
I am in position 100. So I’m not really ranking anywhere. And the intent is informational. But this page is a product page. So I know for example, that for this one, I’m not going to work from the content audit, because I don’t want to work on this page to target this keyword.
I want to create a different kind of page altogether, which I’ve seen from my analysis, what my whose ranking, I’m going to target people in the awareness stage. And I’m gonna call it like, what are keywords?
Because this is what I found, right? I’m making stuff up. Now, by the way, don’t quote me don’t haven’t suggested this to SEMrush. And then I will describe it as ever green guide. additional content formats, right. So let me pause funnel stage could be just to briefly and very quickly show you and your client or your boss. What kind of content you’re creating, are we creating? Like imagine here, you have 100 rows with 100 keywords?
Are we creating content, just all of it for awareness stage? Is that where we’re going to focus? Do we have a mix of awareness? consideration? Maybe? Or are we focusing just on conversions like this is a strategy that’s going to really hone in on conversions? So this helps me as well at the end, like if I filter, I always put filters on my sheets. So here is okay. At the end of the day, if I want to filter just for awareness, how many? How much content do I have for it?
What is the balance between awareness and consideration content I’m proposing. And that is a very quick way to get this idea. Then suggested title comes from reviewing the SERPs, right? And understanding okay, this is the kind of thing and topic I need to cover. So here’s the title, I’m suggesting main content type, it could be an evergreen guide, or like, okay, we can call it like content guide. Or it could be like news article.
A could be old video, maybe something is like much bigger and you think, okay, or competition on the SERPs is so big, we’re never going to rank. But I found that Google for this term surfaces, a lot of videos. So let’s start with the video. Let’s create a video and try to get this way. And after that, we will create like a blog post as well, or something else to feature this video in. Okay. additional content formats is where I always describe the Find Me to create any kind of additional assets or if I need to create more content than just the primary type.
So if you’re I’m creating content guide. But I’ve seen that I need to have a lot of images in that guide to make it visual, because I’m going to talk about actually, this would be a good one SEO tools, because let’s put like blog posts. Because I’ve seen that I’m gonna have to create a listicle about it. Now. I’m gonna have to create a long post that has a list of all like the free SEO tools. Okay, then what I need to have here is images, I need screenshots of the tools I’m going to use, I need screenshots, and you can go into more detail if you want. Or you can leave it as such as it is now and define it further in your content brief to the writer.
But maybe here you want to say if you have time, it’s up to you. I can see okay, screenshots of tools of pricing pages, because you’ve already started to have an idea of what kind of content you want to request to build. And then you can propose your suggested URL, right? If it’s going to be the same as this one, okay, you probably have covered everything in the content audit. So maybe you don’t need to do it here.
Or you want you may want to repeat right, you may want to repeat here that this is where we are already having the right page ranking. This is an additional kind of like suggested title or funnel stage. I want to add here because I don’t have it in my audit. And that’s it. The suggested URL remains the same. Here I include the secondary keywords. So things that have come up while analysing the SERPs either on SEMrush or by seeing what they rank for what kind of terms they target on the SERP And then the pillar page URL.
The pillar page URL can be this exact page. Right? So maybe here you’re describing, okay, this is my main page, I want to create my URL here is the same as here, or this page is not a pillar page. So here, I will define the URL of the pillar page, because then it tells me that this one needs to link to the pillar page in this cluster, every single time. And that’s where I’ll leave it at this point. Remember, it’s, it’s a template, it’s, it’s up to you to make better, smaller or bigger however you want. But that’s it.
Like, for me, this is the backbone of your strategy. If you define here, everything, you have your strategy, all you need afterwards, is to create that summary document that you send to your client, where you say, Okay, I reviewed this, I’ve done my content audit, whatever you may have done, like in my keyword gap analysis with your competitors, everything that has led to this, you put a summary.
And then you say, Okay, I think we need our strategy needs to focus much more on top of the funnel content, or I have proposed an approach that will help us tap into the audience when they are considering us because we’re good. We’re doing well, in terms of awareness. Please find the detailed report here. And this is where you define everything. That’s the final kind of proposal.
And that’s what Claude is, is waiting to see on the 22nd of November. So once you have finished next week, your list of PRI prioritised topics and keywords, please work transfer this on the new template. And I think Claude will be happy to see on the 22nd or by the 22nd, what content you’re suggesting to create to target these keywords and topics. And other than that is just a usual brand rules. And let’s go complete silence. Okay, good Onize go.
Onize Muhammed 42:13
Okay, thank you very much. I want to do this service or products page that is ranking? How will you analyse it? Sorry,
Erika Varangouli 42:21
can you repeat that onize? How would I analyse what ?
Onize Muhammed 42:24
A service or product page?
Erika Varangouli 42:27
Okay, is that for the content audit?
Onize Muhammed 42:31
Yes.
Erika Varangouli 42:33
Okay, can you be more specific just so I can help?
Onize Muhammed 42:36
You know, like, in terms of it’s not really in terms of the general audits, but probably, you know, there’s a mix, there’s an intent issue. Right, and then you want to probably, like improve it. So what are the things I should look out for?
Festus Eze 43:00
Okay, let me know if I got this wrong. But if I understand your question correctly, if we’re if you’re looking at the keyword that has a mixed intent, right, so you need to have to targeted you may need both commercial pages and informational pages. Is that what you’re asking? Yes. Maybe? There’s there’s a question that is ongoing.
Right. Okay, I have this product page, but I’m not ranking very well, I see that it also has information. Should I add informational content on my category page, for example, you will see some big brands doing it, others not doing it. All you have is what you see Google rewarding, right? You have what you want to be found for and then check against those who are doing well. So if you want to be found for car rental, self drive car rental, okay.
You have to check who has been rewarded, how do they do it, what kind of content they have. But you also have to see what other content Google shows. I’m saying that because for many years, content marketers and SEOs, all they did is see what is at the top create exactly the same with other words. And what we’re seeing now is Google is starting to, to devalue this content. It’s not just about repeating what’s at the top.
So you have to also exercise your knowledge as a content marketer or as a writer and as a user. And you have to see who’s doing well, you have to see what Google shows and say, okay, it is logical for a client or someone looking for this term to want to see what product we offer. They will need to have information about the product, they will need to have reviews.
All of those are signals you get From Google as well, but also, maybe they will need some top level content to understand what this product does in general, write more informational content, or I want to create informational content separately, and link to it from a category page. The options are too many on these. That’s what I’m trying to say to be able to answer with a general, you know, thing that applies to everyone.
It is going by industry, it is dependent on the current performance, how much content you already have, like there’s no one answer fits all. But all I’m saying is like, look at what is working and look at what is ranking. Look at what you have, and build on that. Thank you Onize. Any other questions about anything we discussed today? Or we’re working on?
Roshni Shaikh 45:56
So for informational keywords and navigation? You have different frameworks? Document Based on the international keywords?
Erika Varangouli 46:12
Sorry, roshni you were breaking so I couldn’t hear what you asked. For informational? I can’t hear Can anyone. I didn’t get that into breaking really badly. Do you want to type it in the chat? Roshni, I think may be my connection or while Roshni is rejoining anything else? Any questions on today’s topic? Oh, there she is Dobbs fast. Roshni, is it better now?
Roshni Shaikh 46:45
Yes. Can you hear me Erica?
Erika Varangouli 46:47
Yeah, that’s much better.
Roshni Shaikh 46:48
Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah. So my question was, let’s say, if we have to create content for informational keywords and navigational keywords, let’s say that, you know, this is the gap that we have found out on a client’s website?
Do you have a particular framework that you use for creating content for informational keywords separately, and navigational or transactional keywords separately? Do you have like different frameworks? Or it’s not something that you think is important to systemize?
Erika Varangouli 47:20
That’s a very good question. Thank you. I think essentially, what we’ve been throughout this, this class is a work frame for coming up with a strategy right for content. If it differs based on navigational versus informational thing after a stage maybe could be like the stage you are like last week, right?
By that point, you found after doing extensive research, as well on keywords and topics, and you already start getting an idea of okay, I need to focus on navigational, right, I need to focus on information on things so wide, it doesn’t mean anything. It means like what awareness, top of the funnel, something so many things navigational is a bit more specific.
Then and only one then would I kind of consider, okay, my navigational approach for my approach to navigational creating content for navigational terms. I’m trying to phrase it in a way it’s not a work frame. I don’t want to say it’s a work frame, but what you see is like a similar kind of pattern many times because I can I in right?
So actually, yes, so So what you do at that point is you define potentially, the template of the content, you’re templating the content you’re going to create, you’re going more into a brief template for this particular content. And I think Chaitra as an example, is a good example of that, like the car rental, you know, Las Vegas, New York, New York. You templatized that and then you prioritise based on the opportunity, right. But these are these are things like the same we had discussed as well, when we’re talking about category or product pages, right when you’re doing your audit of core pages.
So with Ecommerce sites, those could be your category or subcategory your product pages. Yes, there you have a very specific template, you don’t invent those pages from scratch every time, right you kind of spot. The same issues as well is like you can templatized like how you you’re looking for issues on an E commerce site.
Like okay, does it have reviews, does it have images, are they compressed? Does it have description, and then you sort of like do a check point for them, which we also discussed one When we’re talking about the audit, so in general, I think no to answer honestly, I don’t have, I haven’t spend time putting everything in different kind of work frames.
What happens is once you get to a stage either from the start if you’re working on like client that is a big gay comm site or a big travel site, and you see they have tonnes of pages with the same kind of intent and format, you templatized how you review them, and terms of suggestions, you also need to come up with with a format once and then you just need to define okay, this specific maybe terms this specific placement, where they will be on the side, like the URL structure?
The secondary subheadings? Like, it depends on the type of page but yeah, you can, you can probably automate the process quite to a degree. I should have work frames, you know, what? Do you know of Jess Joyce? Have you heard of her?
Roshni Shaikh 47:20
No, no. But I can look her up.
Erika Varangouli 47:33
Look her up because I think lately as well, she’s doing a great job of sharing work frames, like, you know, visually, her work frames she works. I think for you, Roshni, she will be very relevant, because she works a lot with b2b SaaS.
Roshni Shaikh 51:24
Okay.
Erika Varangouli 51:25
So she has, like, spent quite a bit of time now actually sharing on LinkedIn on Twitter, her work frames around like content there. So maybe some similar things. Yeah.
Roshni Shaikh 51:38
Thank you. Thank you.
Erika Varangouli 51:39
No worries.
Roshni Shaikh 51:42
One more question not related to the class that we had right now. But if you have to write an opinion piece, do you have a framework you follow?
Or do you have a system that, you know, like a checklist that you work on while you’re writing an opinion piece, because you have to tie the argument logically to actually make a point. Without going in tangents?
Erika Varangouli 52:05
We don’t. I mean, I’m sorry to disappoint. But I don’t like to be honest. I don’t like there are things like opinion, for example? I don’t know. I haven’t really thought through because maybe I haven’t had to do this so much. Far.
I’m having to do this more now. But know what happened. I’m more like on the every specific case, because opinion is very much related to many other things that are
Roshni Shaikh 52:34
right, right. Okay.
Erika Varangouli 52:36
I don’t know. I’m sorry.
Roshni Shaikh 52:39
That’s fine, though thank you.
Erika Varangouli 52:40
No worries. Okay. So,
Peris muthinja 52:45
Erica,
Erika Varangouli 52:46
if there are no other questions? Oh Peris, hi go.
Peris muthinja 52:51
Okay. Hi. No, I’m for the topic cluster. I’m feeling a bit limited. Considering the site I’m working with doesn’t have a blog. It has a product pages. So now,
Erika Varangouli 53:14
okay. I think I know where you are going Peris, like how to come up with topics clusters? Yes. Okay. So I think someone asked something relevant last week? I’m not sure though. So I’m repeating it.
It’s a good question Peris, thank you for asking it. What you do if you have a new website or website that doesn’t have a lot of content, you can you take competitors or others in the industries that are doing well, and you get the essentially the keyword gap analysis there is going to be more important for the final outcome.
Because if they’re doing much better, if they have more content, they will be ranking they will be targeting those terms. You can export them and create clusters based on those.
Peris muthinja 54:03
Okay,
Erika Varangouli 54:04
okay?
Peris muthinja 54:05
Yes, yes.
Erika Varangouli 54:06
Excellent. Sandra?
sandra Tabansi 54:09
it’s always the same question we pay is because the website that I have, or the the website that I’m working with, doesn’t have service pages. Just doesn’t have service pages.
Erika Varangouli 54:24
Doesn’t have service pages, so what does it have?
Sandra Tabansi 54:28
It just has, so they have just three, I would say it’s three, three different pages. Their audience page. And this is just a description of what they do because this is a service, it’s a service-based offering. So their audience page, the audience that they work with.
Erika Varangouli 54:55
Which client do you have Sandra sorry, can you remind me?
Sandra Tabansi 54:59
go branded
Erika Varangouli 55:04
is it the one with the surveys? Okay. Yes. So, again, in this case, what I would do is I would understand like if they have, that is also discussions with client and the products, right the team if they have productized this more, but also like from their competitors, how are they talking about the services and the products.
If there is nothing else that can be like product page, like this is it literally is just one thing. And that’s it. You can go down some routes, you can go down the pain points so many times, especially when you see, like in SAAS or technology, it’s one thing but the way it’s broken down into pages is not the actual service.
It’s by industry is by pain point. By pain point. I mean, like job to be done, like what is it, I want to create surveys, I want to get answers. I want to get feedback on product.
So Do you think you use the jobs-to-be-done framework that we’ve discussed, to come up with pages that would answer people’s questions. And obviously you find the keyword matching there.
You look at your competitors. Or once you reach a stage where you think, okay, we can create like these pages to convert people, we can test them, then we need to build our relevance based on more longer tail stuff.
Or based on comparisons or reviews or advice, like how to build questionnaires, how to do this? I don’t know the specifics of your research so far. But once I have that we can discuss as well.
sandra Tabansi 56:41
Okay, thank you.
Erika Varangouli 56:42
Thank you. Onize, one last question cuz I need to go tell me
Onize Muhammed 56:47
if one is writing a comparison posts, sorry it’s not only related? Yeah, is a comparison posts. comparison.
Erika Varangouli 56:57
So you mean comparing your client to their competitor was? Yeah, if you want a right answer, I don’t have it. That is a for me, this is a deeply brand choice, right? I’ve seen brands doing it, because they want to rank for those terms.
Typically, those terms are usually targeted by reviewer affiliate sites. Some sometimes it’s thin content, it’s not trusted. It depends. I don’t do it. I personally do not do it. Or if I do it. No, I don’t do it. I simply don’t.
It doesn’t mean this is right. It doesn’t mean this is not effective in some cases. So again, this is a choice you make as a content marketer alongside the brand you’re working with.
Onize Muhammed 57:47
Okay Thank you.
Erika Varangouli 57:48
No worries. Typically, though, think about it. When people look for comparisons, they look for unbiased comparisons, right?
You have affiliate sites, ranking review platforms, publications that do this kind of thing, like reviewing characteristics, you have influencers, maybe or like industry experts reviewing and comparing you, you don’t necessarily expect as a user to see a brand comparing its own product with another and expecting that to be kind of unbiased.
So that’s why in principle, I think like, it’s not a strategy that can work long term, even if for some reason, gets rewarded by Google for a while, I think it’s not the kind of way people and Google is going.
So I wouldn’t place a lot of effort on that. It could probably be something that my affiliate team works with, or I work with influencers to review my products, but but not necessarily myself as a brand to publish that content.
Chitra Iyer 58:54
But you do see a lot of brand, you do see a lot of these blogs like 10 software’s to do XYZ and then you know, somewhere in the middle, they will put in their own brand as well.
Erika Varangouli 59:08
That is the relevance of the topic to what you have to offer? So you will see like, okay, for SEO tools, right, if I’m writing about it on is relevant to me, for sem rush, right? If you see free SEO tools, of course, I will suggest my own free SEO tools like this is where I come in as being relevant. I’m not comparing though and saying, okay, my free SEO tool versus that other brands free SEO tool, and expect like that’s a different intent.
If people are looking to find a list, or a resource where they can read them sort of discover free tools is very different to someone looking to compare this product versus another product. Those are not the same kinds of pieces. So yeah, for sure. The example you mentioned Chitra has to do with the relevance of this topic this audience to what you have to offer.
I’m sorry, team I have to go. ping me on slack if anything happens, I will try to remember to upload today. Once I get the recording, the template is already on the folder. And let me know if you have any other questions as well on Slack. Okay, thank you so much, everyone.
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